5

POV: Serena Vale

Safe smells like cedar and secrets.

Kai leads me down a short hallway, shoulders broad, hands buried in his pockets like he’s holding something dangerous in there—maybe patience, maybe teeth. A lamp glows low in the corner, throwing honey light over a narrow sofa, a small table, a closed door that might be a bedroom. No photos. No clutter. Quiet as a held breath.

He stops in the middle of the room and speaks without turning fully toward me. “Stay here tonight. No arguing.”

Heat jumps up my neck. “No arguing?” I force a shaky laugh. “You don’t even know me.”

His jaw tightens, that hard line cutting shadow across his cheek. “I know enough.”

“Enough to… what? Lock me in a stranger’s living room?”

“Enough to keep you breathing.” He finally faces me, eyes a storm that decided to sit still. “Sit. Drink water. Sleep if you can.”

“I’m not a child.”

“I’m treating you like someone who was followed.” The words land calm, precise. “Someone tracked your scent.”

My stomach drops. “Tracked—what?”

“Scent.” He says it like a fact he wishes wasn’t true. “Not by accident. Not once. Whoever it was, they were deliberate.”

Air thins, edges sharpen, noise in my ears goes high and bright. “How do you know?”

“Because I know how purpose smells.” His gaze flicks to my throat, then returns to my eyes, apology ghosting through the motion. “Because I watched angles that weren’t coincidence attach themselves to you.”

Palms damp, I wrap my arms around myself. “What does that even mean? Angles?”

“Corners,” he says softly. “Places a shadow waits when it wants to own a path.” A beat. “Yours.”

“Don’t say that.” My voice cracks. “Don’t—”

He steps closer, not touching. The room narrows around his presence. “Breathe.”

“I am breathing.”

“Not enough.”

My back hits the arm of the sofa; I didn’t realize I’d moved. “This is insane,” I whisper. “All of it.”

“Insane is ignoring it.” He stays where he is, a wall I didn’t ask for but can’t move through. “You’ll stay here tonight.”

“I have class tomorrow. I have a life.”

“You have a life,” he agrees, quiet steel threading the syllables. “Which is why you’ll keep it by staying.”

“Why do you care?” The question rips out before I can pretty it up. “Why put me in your car? Why drive me to—where are we?”

“A safehouse.” He glances at the door, then back to me. “Neutral. Clean. Off-grid enough that your name doesn’t land on anything.”

“My name is on my face.”

“My name is on the door,” he counters. “No one touches what’s behind it.”

The lamp hum seems louder. I look at his pockets again—hands still buried, shoulders held back like he’s arguing with himself without making a sound. “Tell me straight, Kai. Am I in danger or are you paranoid?”

“You’re allowed to be scared,” he says. “I’ll be both.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the truth.”

Panic spikes sharp, hot. “Someone tracked my scent,” I repeat, a bad taste in my mouth just from saying it. “How? Why me?”

His eyes darken, a flicker of something old and difficult. “I don’t have that yet.”

“So I’m supposed to trust that you’ll find it while I… sit.”

“While you stay alive,” he says.

I don’t realize I’m trembling until he notices. He doesn’t reach immediately; he lets me see him decide. Then two fingers lift, gentle, inexorable, and tip my chin up.

“No one will touch you while I’m breathing.”

Words should be just air. These feel like a door slamming shut on something with claws. My heartbeat scrapes at my ribs. His skin is warm; the touch is barely there and somehow bigger than anything else in the room.

“You can’t promise that,” I whisper.

“I just did.”

“Why?”

His eyes hold mine as if letting go would mean losing a map. “Because I know enough.”

“About me?” My mouth is dry.

“About what happens when someone like me ignores a pull like this.”

“A pull,” I echo, helpless, hating the quiver in it.

“Instinct,” he says. “Call it what you want. It’s loud enough.”

Silence opens its mouth between us. The safehouse hums. My face tips higher in his hold, not a command—an invitation I don’t know how to refuse, don’t know if I want to. Our breath tangles. One inch becomes half an inch becomes heat I could step into without moving at all.

“Don’t,” I whisper, not sure if I mean him or me or the thing hovering between us.

His gaze drops to my mouth for a heartbeat, then cuts back hard to my eyes, apology and hunger colliding. The line of his jaw tightens again. Fingers leave my chin like it costs him, like peeling something loved away from fire.

“Water,” he says abruptly, turning from me as if the act is oxygen. “There’s bottled in the kitchen. Use the bed. I’ll be outside.”

“That’s it?” I hate how small it sounds. “You just… drop that and walk away?”

“It’s not a drop.” He keeps his back to me, hands still in his pockets, voice gone rougher. “It’s restraint.”

“From what?” The question comes out too fast. “From me?”

“From a mistake,” he says, more to the door than to me.

Anger flares—small, defensive, shame burning at its edges. “Kissing me would be a mistake?”

“Kissing you would be crossing a line I don’t understand yet.” He face-tilts toward me, not quite a turn, profile carved in shadow. “And I don’t cross what I can’t name.”

“What if I wanted you to?”

“That’s not the point.”

“It’s exactly the point,” I shoot back, then wince because I hear the plea under the heat.

He exhales, the sound low, controlled. “You’re shaking.”

“I’m angry.”

“You’re both.” He nods once, making a decision I don’t get to see. “Stay here. Lock the door. If anyone knocks and it’s not me, don’t open it.”

Nerves snap in my hands; I rub my arms hard. “You’ll be… where?”

“Right outside.” He gestures to the hall, finally freeing one hand from his pocket; a vein jumps in his wrist as if the containment hurt. “Call if you need anything.”

“I don’t even have your number.”

“You don’t need it,” he says, and it should sound arrogant, but somehow it lands like attention. “I’ll hear you.”

“What if you don’t?”

“I will.”

We look at each other across a distance measured in inches and storms. The urge to ask him to stay inside the room sits on my tongue, heavy with want and fear. Pride keeps it there. Pride and the memory of a wrist held too tightly by someone who said my name like a warning and a verdict.

“Fine,” I manage. “I’ll… stay.”

“Good.”

“I’m not promising sleep.”

“Don’t,” he says. “Promise breathing.”

A laugh hitches out and dies quick. “You’re exhausting.”

“I know.”

“Do you ever say please?”

“When I mean it.”

“And do you mean it now?”

Something flickers in his eyes—almost a smile, almost grief. “Please stay.”

That softens the part of me that keeps flinching. I nod, throat thick. “Okay.”

He moves to the door, pauses with his hand on the knob, then glances back, gaze traveling my face like he’s making a map he refuses to forget. “Lock it.”

“I heard you.”

“Say you’ll do it.”

“I’ll do it.”

A breath leaves him; he steps out. The hinges are quiet. The click isn’t. I stand there, pulse in my ears, air too big for my lungs. Lock slides under my thumb. Bolt drops. Chain rests into its catch. Each sound is a small anchor.

Feet carry me to the edge of the bed like they know the route better than I do. Fingers find a bottle of water on the nightstand. Cold condenses against my palm, grounding. A cracked laugh slips out without permission. “Stay, breathe, lock,” I mutter. “What a wild night.”

Silence answers.

Something shifts outside the door—weight, posture, the feel of a presence bracing itself against a hallway. My pulse quickens again, stupid, stubborn. I press my ear to the door, not because I’m nosy, but because hearing him breathe would slow mine.

A phone vibrates faintly. Leather rustles. Then his voice cuts through the wood—low, harsh velvet sanded down to growl.

“Find out why her scent affects me.”

My heart trips over itself, stumbles, takes off at a sprint.